Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Baby Boy
Mouse found Dot in the nullified sector. She wasn't terribly surprised. Dot was there whenever she wasn't in the war room, looking for Enzo's null.
She walked towards Dot who was peering behind a bit of debris. "He ain't there, sugar."
Dot whirled around. "Mouse, you scared me." She shook her head at the hacker. "No, he's not there, but how do you know he's not there if you don't look?" She sounded accusatory. Mouse sighed and took Dot's arm. Dot shook her off and frowned. "I'm not done yet."
"You'll never be done. He ain't there," she said nodding her head towards the corner Dot had been searching "he ain't here." She spread her arms indicating the whole sector.
"He's somewhere! He has to be somewhere and I'm going to find him; he's my little brother." She shouldered past Mouse and starting shoving bits of what used to be an apartment.
Mouse followed. "You can't keep doing this. You've been looking for minutes. You have to let go." Dot narrowed her eyes at her. "Don't give me that look, darlin'. Something's going on at the Tor. Something big." They both looked at the firewalled sector next to them. "You have to focus on that before we lose everything."
Dot sat down on the ground. "I've already lost everything."
Mouse put her arm around Dot's shoulders and this time Dot didn't protest. "You haven't lost Mainframe yet. Let's get back to it."
It had been a long cycle of speculating and half-planning. Dot wanted to keep pushing but everyone else agreed that rest was what they needed. She finally agreed with them. She was heading toward her bedroom when she paused outside Enzo's door.
Dot hadn't been in Enzo's room for such a long time. He had declared himself old enough to warrant privacy since his first birthday. She felt strange entering without even knocking, but she pushed the door open.
She lost her breath for a nano. Everything was exactly the way she remembered, exactly the way she remembered him. There were posters hanging on the wall and pictures of her and Bob on the table by his bed. Toys, books, and random bits of boyhood were shoved in a corner in a futile attempt of picking up. Dot ached to see it all.
She sat down on his bed, trying to take everything in, when she noticed something sticking out from underneath the bed. She pulled it out. It was the little teddy bear that their father had given him shortly before the Twin City explosion.
Dot struggled to find her breath. She clutched the worn doll to her heart. She curled into herself and cried for her little boy.
AN: Just taking a short break from Firsts. Don't worry, it's in the works.